


bright upon the ground

by kiden



Category: Agents of Cracked
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/pseuds/kiden
Summary: repost. "He honestly forgot it was Valentine’s Day. They’d been eating those chocolates from heart-shaped candy boxes for weeks, since the moment they were put on the shelf at the CVS near their house, and anyway, with Michael, the passage of time is mostly irrelevant."





	bright upon the ground

Unless flowers were still in the earth, still growing in a garden or a field or a pot, they always reminded Daniel of death. A few times he tried to give flowers to Mandy, but that was a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks game plan. And because it was Mandy, absolutely nothing stuck, and Daniel went right back to his firm anti-flowers stance.

Every bouquet of flowers ever given in the history of mankind eventually died. That was a fact. Sure, there was something nice about the idea of a pretty flower, dried and pressed between the pages of a book. You could imagine where it grew and who picked it, how far it traveled, and why, who pressed it between that specific book and what the meaning of it all was. That was a story, and Daniel loved stories, especially ones about love, but the flower still had to die in the process. Even if it was to make something beautiful.

After every funeral he’d ever been to, he always wondered what happened to those big our condolences arrangements afterward. Did people take them home? Line them up down a hallway or fill up a room, and wait until they died too? He used to imagine thousands of brown, dried up petals all over beds and dressers or swept into corners like snowdrifts.

Or maybe people just left them at funeral homes or cemeteries to be someone else’s problem. A whole lifetime’s worth of flowers, given by those who loved you, overflowing from an alley dumpster somewhere, unwanted and forgotten and left to rot.

So, when he wakes up to wildflowers in his bed, on the nightstand, tucked behind his ears - some of them still carrying their roots, dirt and a stray pebbles - it’s a testament to how fucking crazy about Michael he is that he only reaches out for him clumsily, blind without his glasses, to drag him close for a kiss.

He honestly forgot it was Valentine’s Day. They’d been eating those chocolates from heart-shaped candy boxes for weeks, since the moment they were put on the shelf at the CVS near their house, and anyway, with Michael, the passage of time is mostly irrelevant. Which is why it’s so incredibly touching that Michael remembered, that he had a plan, that he has made such a fantastic effort.

Michael’s fingers are covered in dried dirt when he brushes his knuckles over Daniel’s cheek - he can feel the dust against his neck and tickle his ear - and it’s so romantic there’s a chance, however improbable, he might just die. It’s only a little after seven by the way the sun is spilling across the room, and Daniel can smell the earth under the prettiness of the flowers. Michael must have slipped out of bed right after Daniel fell asleep.

The inside of Michael’s mouth tastes like coffee, Jesus, Daniel didn’t even know he drank real coffee. He pulls away, so Daniel presses starved little kisses to Michael’s chin and jaw. “Do you like it?”

“I hate it,” Daniel laughs.

When Michael opens his mouth to argue or complain about how ungrateful he is, Daniel drags him back down into another kiss. He kisses Michael slow and carefully, and with his eyes squeezed shut, let’s all the very best things he thinks about Michael be the biggest thoughts in his head. With a sigh, Michael melts against him, letting his sleep-warm body bear all his weight, and makes an unhappy, offended noise as he pulls away from Daniel’s mouth.

He looks genuinely hurt and Daniel rubs the crease between Michael’s eyebrows with his thumb.

“They make me sad, you know? They’re just gonna die,” Daniel explains. He takes one of the flowers from Michael’s side of the bed and tucks it behind his ear. “And I’m starting to wheeze a little.”

“Well I tried, Dan,” Michael says petulantly. “I thought you’d think it was romantic.”

Daniel pushes his face into the warm place between Michael’s shoulder and his neck. He smells like the earth, and sweat, and when Daniel kisses the heated skin there, salt and candy, Michael-taste.

He rubs his face up Michael’s neck, noses the damp hair at his temple, and leaves kisses everywhere he touches. Against his ear, Daniel says, “It is romantic. It’s the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you.”

Michael makes a crazed, outraged sound and pulls back to look Daniel in the face with his comically raised eyebrows. “Mixed signals, Daniel.”

“I’m sorry,” Daniel says and bites his lip to keep himself from laughing. “I love them, and that you did this for me, and I love you. I just don’t want to see of all them die.”

“Okay.”

They sit up together, Michael in his lap, and he kisses Daniel’s nose before slipping his glasses on his face. Taking a moment to make sure they’re settled properly behind his ears without knocking away the flowers he’d tucked there while Daniel slept. “Okay,” he repeats thoughtfully and looks around their bedroom.

It was just a mass of color before, but now Daniel can see each individual flower - and it really is beautiful. It’s overwhelming. There must be hundreds of them. Daniel has more than enough books to press them all between the pages.

“I have an idea,” Michael says, and rolls off Dan’s lap, off the bed and to his feet. “Come on. I made you coffee.”

Those visions of brown, dead petals, left to rot in garbage cans or swept out of doors are the last thing on Daniel’s mind as he sits by the tree line in their backyard, mindless of the grass stains on his pajamas. The coffee is doing absolutely nothing to relieve the sudden dryness in his mouth and throat as he watches Michael. On his knees, three feet in front of Daniel, Michael is taking handfuls of flowers out of the storage tote he used to move them all outside, and he's putting them back.

And the earth is letting him. He’s not just throwing them into the woods to die where Daniel can’t see them. The ground is taking them back; roots are growing, twisting and hungry, from the stems and burrowing back into the dirt.

“Daniel has an unhealthy obsession with death,” Michael’s saying, just as another handful roots. The flowers sway a little in a breeze like they’re acknowledging him. “At least he doesn’t read obituaries anymore, am I right?”

The flowers were strewn all over their bedroom, in their bed and between their bodies as they kissed, that was beautiful. But this is the most breathtaking thing Daniel has ever seen. He’s watched Michael destroy a lot over the years but he never imagined how wonderful it would be to see him breathing life back into something. Never even thought to imagine it was possible.

Which seems short-sighted now, in retrospect.

Of course he can. It’s just, usually, he never wants to.

“We have to live with it,” Michael says, sitting back on his haunches and wiping the sweat off his forehead with his arm. “Love means never having to say ‘you’re a pain in my fucking ass, Daniel, we could be fucking right now but instead I’m out here doing this shit.’”

“But you said it anyway.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really have to.” Michael leans towards him, and Daniel sets down his coffee and gets up to knee-walk closer for a kiss.

“I’d help if I could. I want to.”

“Here.”

Michael takes another handful of flowers and presses them to Daniel’s palm. He keeps his hand around Daniel’s and the magic inside of Michael runs from where they’re touching to the tips of his fingers. It’s warm and light and feels like when a wave breaks at the beach, the water rushing up to splash around your feet. It’s just the edges of something untamable. The roots wiggle and stretch towards the ground and Michael guides Daniel’s hand down so they can find it.

After that batch is done, Daniel sits back and pulls Michael with him, their hands still intertwined, and says, “You’re the most amazing person I will ever meet and I never, ever want to be with anyone else. You know that right? Promise you’ll still like me when I’m old.”

“You hear this?” Michael says to the flowers. Then to Daniel, he says, “He thinks I’m going to let him get old. We’re gonna be young forever.”

“Okay.”

Michael kisses him again, sweet and tender, and the same magic feeling from Daniel’s fingertips blooms warmly in his chest. It’s not a white-lie promise from Michael, who Daniel is now certain will not age and grow old the way any normal person might, it’s a real, heartfelt promise that he intends to keep. And there’s no way to describe how lovely it feels for Daniel to know he will never be left behind in the empty rooms of Michael’s memory, swept into forgotten, dusty corners.


End file.
